Why The Supreme Court Just Killed Aereo: An Explainer

Aereo is a pretty simple concept: You rent a DVR and an antenna from a website, and can watch broadcast TV over the Internet. And broadcast networks loathe it. They loathed it so much they went to the Supreme Court to shut Aereo down… and they just got their wish.

For the record, your cloud-based DVR through your cable company is probably safe: They pay to stream video. But in a surprising decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that what Aereo does is a public performance under the law. That means they’re in violation of the Copyright Act of 1976, and need to pay retransmission fees for the content they stream.

In other words, Aereo is probably out of business. Anybody who’s used Aereo in the markets it’s operating in have racked up the company a huge pile of retransmission fees it probably can’t pay. And the networks hate it so much, they’re more likely to want to shut it down completely than actually try to use modern technology to cater to what people actually want.

That’s the most frustrating thing about all this. Aereo is fundamentally useful and gets people to watch network television in ways and in places they normally wouldn’t, which is theoretically what the networks want. Instead they seem furious that anybody would use technology to watch TV at anything other than the convenience of the broadcaster.

It’s an attitude reflected in their apps. The apps developed by the networks are uniformly terrible and predicated on having a cable subscription to watch what is, literally, given away for free. When a basic cable channel is getting streaming right while broadcast networks flounder, there’s a problem here.

It’s too much to ask that broadcast networks will figure this out, or even bother creating a livestreaming app that actually makes sense. To the networks, for a long time, we’ve been livestock to be sold to advertisers, and they’re approaching this with the attitude of the dumb cows getting out of the barn rather than a fundamental shift in how television is watched that isn’t going away. Of course, considering the rapid rise of free open-source DVR software and the fact that younger consumers are increasingly either cord-cutters or cord-nevers, that raises a pretty important question: How long can they pretend it’s still the twentieth century?

@Dan I’ve been without cable for 2 years my father is on the verge of making the switch now for the exact reason you said. He’s done paying $200/month for sports. He’s a huge sports fan of all kinds so this is pretty big for him. I’m working with him now to figure out how to get him at least football without cable.

Cut the cord nine years ago. I am usually fine with whatever college and pro football games I get over the antenna. I’d like more basketball in my life but you can’t have everything. Besides, as my life fills up more with family, work and child responsibilities, I am becoming mostly a casual sports fan anyway. Porky hits it on the head. I don’t really care if I’m watching things when they air or three years later. It’s new to me either way.

Scalia’s dissent is excellent for showing how fucking haphazard and poorly-reasoned this decision is by the Court’s “liberals,” especially with this question:

Making matters worse, the Court provides no criteria for determining when its cable-TV-lookalike rule applies. Must a defendant offer access to live television to qualify? If similarity to cable-television service is the measure, then the answer must be yes. But consider the implications of that answer: Aereo would be free to do exactly what it is doing right now so long as it built mandatory time shifting into its “watch” function. Aereo would not be providing live television if it made subscribers wait to tune in until after a show’s live broadcast ended. A subscriber could watch the 7 p.m. airing of a 1-hour program any time after 8 p.m. Assuming the Court does not intend to adopt such a do-nothing rule (though it very well may), there must be some other means of identifying who is and is not subject to its guilt-by-resemblance regime.

Funny how the GOP is in the pocket of every industry of big business except one. When it comes to Big Media, Obama and the Democrats are their fucking puppets, and we’re being charged for the privilege of watching them jerk themselves off.

Dear Sweet Christ. Finding myself fully in agreement with a Scalia opinion is the last straw. THE. LAST. STRAW. Fuck you cable cartel for making this happen. I’m going to go get drunk and watch reruns of Night Court until I can get this terrible taste out of my mouth.